Who is my family?

The day after my last post I was with the homies in the apartment and we were looking at Mark 3:22-35. In a couple sections Jesus mom and brothers come to take him away because they think he is nuts. Jesus turns toward his followers and asks, "Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."

We talked about the invitation of Jesus to leave one family and join another - a crazy level of loyalty. I asked Teddy what was happening for him with his decision to leave the gang. He said he had talked with a couple senior gang members - shot callers - who are in prison. They asked him why he wanted out of the gang and he told them. So they blessed him out!

One of the shot callers I am aware is having big Jesus interactions in solitary confinement and will be a part of our ministry when he gets out, but I had no idea that such a thing was possible. It is so beautiful, it takes my breath away! What a huge answer to prayer! Thank you Jesus.

Who are my enemies?

And then he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (who he also names "sent ones") so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James and John the sons of Zebedee (to whom he gave the names Sons of Thunder); Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

This is a passage we mostly breeze right by. Yeah, so there were twelve. We were reading through Mark when we hit upon this (Art, Teddy, Ramon, Saul and me), and we got talking. "What do we know about the guys on this list?"

"Some of them were fishermen."

I pointed out that Matthew was another name for Levi the tax collector mentioned in chapter 2. Tax collectors were not just sinners, they were traitors to their own people, working for the occupying forces and taking their skim off the top. This guy who was considered scum of the earth even by outcasts was considered cream of the crop by Jesus. Then there is Simon the Zealot. Think Taliban. What is it that keeps him from taking off Levi's head?

"God?"

"Yeah, well, maybe something like that.
What is it like to be enemies, to really hate someone because of the group they belong to?"

These are gang members I am talking to. "What does it mean for you as a Sureno to be enemies with a Norteno?"

"It's about pride, dog, like we are better, we are tougher. It is all about building yourself up by taking them down." Even within Sureno there are factions depending on what neighborhood you are from and these will war with each other.

"So you know what it is like being enemies. Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a small group of Jesus followers with a Norteno?"

"Dog! Hell no!"

"But that's what we see here between Matthew/Levi and Simon. What is it that makes that possible? Maybe its that Jesus shows them both something better than what they imagined for themselves and jumps them in to his gang? You've got to leave one gang to join another."

Teddy speaks up and tells us he has been feeling the Holy Spirit a lot, in really powerful ways. He has been adopted into our heavenly Father's family and he is feeling it. He is ready to leave the gang. At 21 he has been in the gang for nine years and is a senior member. At this point he doesn't have to do things to prove himself.

"What does that mean to leave the gang?" I ask.

"When you get jumped into the gang, three or four of the homies beat the shit out of you. When you leave, it is more like a dozen. And then every time they see you after that they are supposed to put you in check for leaving. But I'm not afraid. God is with me. And I want to be there for my son. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what they say to me or about me. What matters is that my son calls me dad."

Today you will be with me in Paradise

I was talking with Alberto in the jail today. He has been experiencing so much of God's presence lately. I didn't think our last conversation had gone anywhere when I talked about forgiving enemies, but he said he had made a list of all the people he needed to forgive and had spent a lot of time praying forgiveness toward them. When he was done he said it felt like a small thorn had been removed from his heart. He said he told his mom she should forgive some people and she laughed at him, but he insisted that God was bringing him freedom.

He said he'd had a couple dreams where he was speaking the scriptures to someone. The most recent one was with the thieves on the crosses next to Jesus. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

I asked him why he thought he'd dreamed that scripture. He wasn't sure. I suggested that Jesus was saying that being a criminal didn't separate him from Him and that even today he was with Jesus in His Kingdom.

Worship sets us free

Back in May we hosted a conference on healing of emotions and memories with Lin Button and her team from London. I was looking forward to this and was in charge of coordinating worship times. As we got closer to the conference I found myself exhausted and that it was difficult to worship. Worship leading was hard and dry. It was becoming hard work. I was feeling disconnected.

The morning before the conference I was feeling it even more, that worship was getting further from me and harder - like I didn't have it in me. The thought of picking music and leading it felt like despair.

Then the thought came to me as I was walking: "Worship is where breakthrough happens, more than in teaching. Of course the Enemy is attacking your worship." At that moment the despair lifted and I knew I needed to press in to God in worship no matter how I felt.

But it really helped to feel freer to move into it because of that encounter with Jesus on the trail.

The journey is too much for you

I've been feeling fried - overwhelmed, taking on too many people's stuff, exhausted; each day taking longer than the last to get momentum, passion, or energy. And I added to my schedule taking on several speaking engagements and a conference this month.

I go semi-regularly to the Bellingham healing prayer rooms because I need to receive prayer from places in addition to our ministry at Tierra Nueva. Last week I came in and found that someone had crafted a six foot cross and mounted it on the wall in the hallway of the prayer rooms and backlit it with rope lights. I placed my hand on the cross and it felt good. There was a physical sense of peace and rest - so I stayed there a while and eventually knelt.

As I was kneeling I found myself thinking about angels. What came to my mind was a picture of me kneeling and an angel draping a cloth over me, and another angel putting something on my lips.

When I got up to go into the waiting room, a woman approached me and said that there were angels in front of the cross and I had been kneeling in one. I stayed in the waiting room for a while and realized that the cross was a better place to wait so I went and sat at the foot. By the time I went in to receive prayer, I felt light and great.

I taught last weekend at a retreat near Mt. Rainier. These are often exhilarating and exhausting weekends, but this time I felt energized when I left. My time in the prayer room brought about a complete turn around for me.

Sometimes we can have experiences and not know what they mean or do or what to do with them. But this work of God has so clearly refreshed me, there is no other explanation for it.

I am reminded of a story from the Old Testament when the prophet Elijah is threatened by the queen Jezebel, he runs for his life and is ready to quit, even to the point of asking God to end his life. He lays down in an exhausted sleep and when he wakes there is an angel baking bread and offering him a jar of water. The angel says, "Arise and eat, for the journey is too much for you," and on the strength of the bread and water Elijah travels for 40 days.

Yeah, that's what was going on. Thank You God.

Too many Courtrooms

I sat in Whatcom County Superior Court waiting to see what would happen with the case of another friend of mine. Having met with him regularly in the jail and knowing he was going off to prison for his fifth time (he is 42 and has been in the system since he was 12), I felt a deep sense of futility about our work. Where is the lasting change? Where is real freedom and transformation?

And that is just one man. I sat in the courtroom and saw man after man come before the judge and felt overwhelmed by the needs and brokenness. In addition to these men are all those sitting around me who have as much need.

I thought about when Jesus looked at the crowds that were coming to him and had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Maybe he was feeling overwhelmed, too. So he tells his disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest and ask Him to send workers into the fields, because the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.

So this is what I prayed a few weeks ago. And I realize that these people in this room are precisely the people Jesus spent his time with - he was called a friend of sinners and tax collectors. He didn't bring them into the synagogue; he went to their houses...

Rainier Marie Rilke writes in The Voices:

The rich do well to keep silent
for no one cares who or what they are.
But those in need must reveal themselves,
must say: I am blind
or: I am on the verge of going blind
or: nothing goes well with me on the earth...
or: I have a sickly child
or: I have little to hold me together...

And chances are that this is not nearly enough

And because people ignore them as they pass by
a thing; these unfortunates have to sing!

And at times one hears some excellent singing!

Of course, people differ in their tastes:
some would prefer to listen to choirs of boy-castrati

But God himself comes often and stays long
when the castrati's singing disturbs him.